Craft an elaborate story about your favorite Midway classic and walk away with a fabulous prize.

Even though phone and tablet technology has advanced to the point where we can now ask subservient robot lady voices the laziest of questions, these seemingly magical devices still have surprising limitations. If you're a retro gamer, you've probably learned the hard way that those glossy touch screens don't really replicate the tactile feel of classic gaming as much as they could -- which is why handy accessories like the iCade have been invented to help those of us with iDevices do more than throw birds at pigs and cut ropes strategically. And thanks to our friends at Warner Bros. Entertainment (and their recent Midway Arcade Free app), we'll be giving away three iCades and two iCade mobiles (pictured above) so some lucky 1UP readers can play games on their iThings in a much more appropriate manner. Interested? Here's how you can enter!

War never changes, but Company of Heroes will.

With Company of Heroes 2, Relic Entertainment is exploring fairly familiar territory. Certainly the Eastern Front was distinct as compared with other World War II theaters -- especially those I would imagine most people, at least those in the United States, picture when thinking of WWII, due to this country's involvement elsewhere during the war. CoH2's focus on this aspect of the war affords Relic the opportunity to introduce features like a dynamic weather system that emphasizes the snowy conditions the Eastern Front was home to. It's an addition that has the potential to impact gameplay in a significant way, and it could even cause two matches on the same map to play out much differently because of the way snow and cold weather changes things. This is all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is not dramatically unlike its predecessor, part of which is due to it still being set in World War II. CoH2 is the series' first numbered sequel, but it's set during the same war as the first game and its two expansions. What does that say about the limitations on where Relic is willing to go with the series?

Not much, as it turns out. In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, game director Quinn Duffy expressed a willingness to expand beyond the deadliest war in human history. "We could look at setting this game anywhere," Duffy said. "We know what we want to deliver in a Company of Heroes game. We know what we want it to feel like. So the setting becomes another piece of military history to tell -- or another set of stories. But the game should feel like a Company of Heroes product." He went on to reaffirm that CoH is not explicitly about World War II, but that, given the Eastern Front's significance, it demanded to be covered before Relic moved on from WWII.

Items you've found playing Team Fortress 2 may be able to fatten up your Steam Wallet.

Steam has been the recipient of a great deal of updates recently. While the service has had long stretches in the past without any new features being added, in a relatively short span of time we've seen the launch of the Steam Mobile app, Steam Greenlight, and Big Picture mode, as well as the addition of non-gaming software and an expansion of the Steam Community. As it explores launching its own hardware, Valve is continuing to move ahead with new Steam features, the latest of which provides its users with another opportunity to make money.

Before now, users could trade items from certain games and giftable copies of games with others through Steam. It's now possible, with today's launch of the Steam Community Market, to sell select items to other users for real-world money. With the feature currently in beta, support for this is limited: Only one-time consumable items from Team Fortress 2 -- always Valve's guinea pig -- may be sold right now. That greatly limits the possibilities of what's for sale, as the bulk of TF2's items are cosmetic items (primarily hats) and weapons. It does sound as if these constraints will be loosened in the future and they are only in place for the purpose of the beta, but it remains to be seen if things will be opened up completely.

Steam's Big Picture mode does at least pave the way for gaming-capable living room PCs.

At one point, Steam's Big Picture didn't seem particularly significant. When it was first announced early last year, its appeal seemed limited, albeit very useful for some: among other things, it would make using Steam on a television set much more convenient. But with that not being an enormous demographic, it was no shock when the seemingly simple feature took so long to be released -- it probably was just a low priority. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that the carefully crafted Big Picture mode is one of the most significant additions Steam has ever seen, and its official launch earlier this month has paved the way for Valve to more fully focus on the broader goal of bringing computer gaming into the living room.

Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are all attempting to enhance the non-gaming functionality of their respective consoles in order to turn those systems into more central components of people's living rooms. Valve, meanwhile, has its eyes set on entering the living room, but it has the tall task of getting a box there in the first place. Back in March, rumors circulated that Valve planned to deliver a so-called Steam Box, complete with controller, that would amount to a gaming-capable PC meant to be connected to the television. The announcement of such a device seemed imminent at the time, when in fact plans to create such a thing are much longer-term and less rigid than believed at the time. Valve is continuing to pursue hardware, but it's hardly seeking to be the only option on the market.

IGN and 1UP come to together to discuss the mysterious trailer unveiled at last week's VGAs.

A trailer announcement for a new game called The Phantom Pain drew a lot of attention at last Friday's Video Game Awards. Suspiciously, it looks a lot like a Metal Gear game, but Konami isn't talking about it yet. Yesterday, IGN's Mitch Dyer and 1UP's Jose Otero participated in an IGN Rewind Theatre, where the two dissected the trailer and talked abut the telltale signs that point to Konami's stealth action series. Check out the video above and tell us what you think of this bizarre trailer announcement.

With people being asked to put up their money, asking for more information doesn't seem unreasonable.

2012 might very well end up being the Year of the Kickstarter. Particularly since Double Fine managed to raise in excess of $3.3 million earlier this year, many developers have turned to the crowdfunding site to get the money needed to create their videogame projects. It's because of Kickstarter that Double Fine Adventure is happening, that a sequel to Wasteland will be a reality, and that the guys responsible for Space Quest are making a new adventure game. But with people being asked to put their money up, typically for a game that is far from done, what level of detail is reasonable for them to expect from those behind the projects?

Certainly, no one is ever obligated to back a Kickstarter project. A frequent point made in comments on 1UP's previous Kickstarter-related stories and elsewhere around the web is that some people refuse to support Kickstarter for one reason or another. It's difficult to blame them. The threat of a successfully backed project not turning out well or outright not being completed continues to loom; we've seen how close a project has come to falling apart and, odds are, it will happen sooner or later. There's also the matter of handing over money, oftentimes in exchange for a copy of the final product, for something that might not be completed for months or years.

Call of Duty haters may not want to rejoice just yet, though.

The videogame industry lacks any single, reliable sales tracker, particularly when accounting for digital sales, which is absolutely crucial for getting a full picture of the industry. Despite this, Call of Duty is widely accepted as the dominant franchise, at least as far as traditional videogame releases go. Year after year, the series tops sales charts and sets various records that publisher Activision is happy to tout in press releases and in front of investors. This year after year growth can't continue forever, and so it becomes a matter of when that sales peak is reached. Some indications suggest we may have finally hit that point, though even if that is the case, those who can't wait for the series' demise likely still have a long wait ahead before seeing what it is that they want.

It's important to make clear the sort of drop we're potentially talking about here. It's likewise important to realize we're talking about potential here -- Black Ops II has not even been out for a full month, and so plenty of time remains for it to blow past lifetime sales figures for previous Call of Duty iterations. But, videogame sales are more highly concentrated in the period immediately following launch. And with Black Ops II's launch coming just as the holiday shopping season kicked off, this game's biggest days are without a doubt behind it.

Western games could be huge in Japan, but publishers need to think more strategically first.

Coffee, butter, The Avengers -- why is it that Japan has grown to love so many other western commodities while video games struggle to establish a foothold? Sure, you can chalk it up to cultural differences. But which ones exactly? Looking at successful products can help answer this question, and perhaps even inform the industry how to move forward.

Japan is the boss of them all when it comes canned coffee technology, but those miraculous beans had a tough time taking root in foreign soil. When Dutch Traders first introduced coffee in the 1800s, it was received as a foreign curiosity that could barely supplement (let alone replace) the indigenous tea culture.

This latest bundle does away with several core elements of Humble Bundles past.

The launch of the latest Humble Indie Bundle yesterday was an unusual one. Rather than being met with the usual reaction -- people spreading the word, maybe some praise being bestowed for a strong selection of games -- this particular one instead prompted complaints that the Humble Bundle has lost its way. That's because it consists of games published by THQ, a company which, despite its ongoing financial troubles, is far larger than those we normally see featured in these bundles. While I don't find the situation quite as egregious as others do, I do think this is a step in the wrong direction.

The first Humble Indie Bundle was launched in early 2010, and it's still easy to see why it was so appealing: Buyers could get five great indie games for Windows, Mac, or Linux without any DRM, and at any price they deemed appropriate, be it hundreds of dollars, a few pennies, or, in the case of that particular bundle, nothing at all. To sweeten the deal, purchasers could freely decide how their money was divided up between the developers of these games, the organizers of the bundle, and a pair of charitable organizations, the latter of which made it so five games could be had in return for nothing more than a donation to charity.

New IPs allegedly don't do well late in console cycles, and yet Dishonored has exceeded expectations.

Listen to what many industry executives have to say, and you'd be led to believe original intellectual property doesn't sell well late in a console cycle. The time to introduce a new IP supposedly comes when new consoles are launched; once those systems have been around for years, that's when the focus shifts to existing properties. This is something that has never made a lot of sense to many people, and the performance of Dishonored isn't about to do anything to convince those people that executives have it right.

Despite being an original IP -- just the sort of game that supposedly shouldn't be excelling at this point in time -- Dishonored is doing very well. After receiving a strong critical reception prior to its release in early October, the game has gone on to sell better than publisher Bethesda anticipated.

An extensive look at the deals you'll be able to get over the next few days.

Thanksgiving is now just a day away here in the United States, but what many people are looking forward to is the crazy shopping day that ensues the following day. Videogames are, as always, a hot Black Friday item, and there is no shortage of deals on our favorite hobby at a variety of retailers, both of the brick-and-mortar and online variety. As is becoming a more and more common occurrence, many of these deals will actually kick off on Thanksgiving day, if they haven't already.

Below is a look at many of the deals you'll find at some of the nation's biggest retailers. It's by no means a comprehensive list, but it does consist of the vast majority of the advertised deals from the retailers we've covered. GameStop, annoyingly enough, hasn't released its Black Friday ad yet; fortunately, an anonymous employee has done us the service of sharing the deals with Cheap Ass Gamer anyway so we can plan ahead.

We look back on the most influential anime ever made.

This week, Games, Dammit! takes a break from talking strictly about video games to bring you a one-of-a-kind discussion about the biggest anime ever. That's right, this episode is all about Evangelion. To celebrate the release of the third rebuild film in Japanese theaters, 1UP's Jose Otero, Jeremy Parish, and Bob Mackey are joined by Christian Nutt, features editor for Gamasutra.com, as they dive deep into a discussion all about EVA. Find out what the series brought to video games and listen in on some of the most divisive topics of the series.

How does Wii U stack up to previous Nintendo console launches? We break it down with pictures.

Nintendo's next console launches in just two days -- perhaps you've heard about it? We've seen plenty of hand-wringing about the future of the system, a perceived lack of hype for it, the changing nature of video games, and more doomsaying. Who knows what the future holds? Not us! But we certainly can look at Wii U in the context of the past -- and as it turns out, the console holds up pretty well against previous Nintendo system launches both in terms of actual price and day-one launch lineup. Please check out our massive Nintendo launch charticle and draw your own conclusions.